Hands in the Grass
by candyflavordlies
Summary: A strange man with two hearts and a trip to the moon, that's all it takes. She should have known then that he was going to break her heart. Spoilers through the end of S3. One-sided Martha/Doctor fic
1. The Ballad of Martha Jones

**_Author's Note: This fic was inspired by Annie Stela's song "Hands in the Grass". I'll post excerpts in the last chapter but if you get a chance, I highly recommend giving it a listen._**

* * *

 ** _The Ballad of Martha Jones_**

A strange man with two hearts kisses her on the moon and that's all it takes. It's the opening line to an insane chapter in her life and it's so painfully and simply true.

A strange man kisses her and takes her to meet Shakespeare. Sleeps in a bed with her hundreds of years before she was born and it's the most ridiculous thing in the world but she loves it.

She's always been extraordinarily ordinary in the sense that she's not that different from anyone back home. Graduated top of her class, went to med school, doing her internship. Same thing as the other 30 or so people in her class. But this? How many of them could say they traveled through space and time with an alien?

Not many, she thinks. Probably, hopefully none.

And the fact that said alien is more than easy on the eyes? Well, that's just icing on the cake.


	2. Warning Bells

_**Warning Bells**_

Looking back, she's surprised she didn't recognize it sooner. That sharp pang of jealously in the pit in her stomach when he mentions her name. Because he doesn't _just_ mention her, he compares them. Constantly. Its unfair, on so many levels, but mostly because he doesn't have the decency to tell her what she's up against.

All he says, all he _has_ to say is ' _oh, Rose would know_ ' and Martha Jones is suddenly this inept nobody, incapable of proper space/time travel, regardless of no crash course whatsoever and possibly the worse tour guide ever.

Doesn't matter though, because she continues to try and impress him with her wit and her knowledge and her smiles because she's pretty damn amazing on her own.

And when he mentions she who must not be named, Martha rolls her eyes and resolves to be better than this Rose person.


	3. Secret Secrets

_**Secret Secrets**_

Martha sees him leaving a room one day. Before she can call out to him, before she can get a glimpse, the door seals shut and he and it disappear.

She sees it a few other times but whenever she's within a few meters of it, it's gone. She never knows if he's just gone in or just come out. As if warning her away, the door vanishes and the corridor darkens, just a little.

Martha doesn't know what's in there or why it's being hidden but she knows one thing for sure.

It seems the TARDIS and the Doctor are keeping secrets.


	4. Hollow Me Out

_**Hollow Me Out**_

Although he has told her about his home planet and about his life as a renegade Time Lord, he never tells her about Rose. Oh, he'll mention her in passing, always the impossible to reach rate of measure but if she asks anything, anything at all, his eyes turn obsidian, dark, frightening.

But one day, after they battle a man who thinks he can cheat death, after the Doctor speaks about losing everything and everyone to time, she gets up the courage.

Martha is standing across from him on the other side of the console. She wraps the TARDIS key around her hand as if it will keep her safe.

"Doctor?"

"Hmm?"

"Will you ever tell me about her? About Rose?"

Everything seems to still, to both harden and soften, until the ship is humming unpleasantly and the Doctor is doing his best impression of a statue.

It's only a moment for him, barely a fraction of a second and he makes up his mind. Because he knows that he can be cruel and unfair, and because he knows that she deserves nothing but the truth, he answers her honestly.

"No." He swallows thickly around the lump in his throat. "I don't think so."

Martha nods and smiles softly, as if that answer doesn't break her heart.


	5. Already Halfway Through

**_Already Halfway Through_**

They're standing above the city of Great Stanhope and Martha has no idea what she's doing anymore. They're saving cities and planets and traveling space and time but she's lost, confused and unhappy. It's been months and hard as she tries not to, she is falling more and more in love with the Doctor every day. She glances at him through her peripheral and as she expects, his eyes are a million miles away.

"Did you bring her here too?" He smiles softly but it's full of sadness.

"No."

"But you wanted to." He looks at her then, and there she goes, falling down that hole in the bottom of her stomach.

"Yes." She holds her breath and looks away from him, into the distance and across the expanse of one of the greatest cities in all the universe.

"She must have been something."

"Oh, no, Martha Jones. She was...everything." Tears prick at her eyes, though Martha isn't sure if it's her heart breaking or his. They're in a moment, a rare bubble of truth and honesty. She takes a chance, pushes him because she thinks she deserves at least this. She deserves to know why it is she's never been good enough.

"Did you love her?"

The question falls from her lips and then there is so much _silence_ that she has to look at him, make sure he's still here and not on his way back to the TARDIS without her. He has gone rigid, frighteningly so, and from that movement, or lack thereof, Martha experiences a completely new form of fear. She's about to back pedal, apologize because there's a line he's silently asked her not to cross and she's doing it anyway. When that knot in her stomach begins to grow, she opens her mouth but he has already begun to speak.

"When my planet was destroyed, I floated in the Vortex for a very long time. I was afraid of what I had done, of what I could do. But I couldn't stay in there forever. When the TARDIS and I finally landed, it was on Earth. It should have been familiar - we'd been there thousands of times. But in that time, everyone I knew was dead. No brigadiers, no intrepid reporters, just bright new faces who wouldn't recognize me. It didn't feel like home anymore." He looks down and rocks back on his heels. He looks up again, his eyes finding a new point of distraction. "Soooo, I planned to pop in, deal with the Nestene Consciousness and then pilot away. Try to find something else." He pauses and fidgets and sighs. "Then I met Rose. She was clever and caring and feisty. I was very different back then. And I didn't have this brilliant head of hair, nearly bald. Me! Imagine that!" As if to make his point, he runs a nervous hand through those magnificent strands, as Martha has come to think of them. "And I was the last of it. The Last of Gallifrey. The Last of the Time War. The Last of the Time Lords with the Last TARDIS. But it didn't matter who I was or how rude or mean or scary I was because..." His face scrunches up like he's trying to find the words and Martha doesn't dare interrupt. This is the most he's ever told her about his relationship with this mystical companion and she can't stop listening. "Because what I needed above all else, in all the universe, was a friend."

It's here that things begin to make sense to her. She can see the centuries behind his eyes and the pain of losing every tether to everything he has ever known. She doesn't know how she knows, but she does. She isn't enough. She can't _just_ be his friend. She doesn't know how to be anything but in love with him. How can she not be?

 _He_ is everything. Maybe that's where the problem is. She isn't his everything, even if he is hers.

Martha decides then that she has to leave.


	6. Heavy Cross

**_Heavy Cross_**

She doesn't, not then. And it takes her a year to realize she should have.

She travels the world trying to save it, all the while preaching her love for the Doctor as the new gospel.

The words eat at her sometimes, when she's alone and thinking back on him and Jack. Hiding in the darkness, hoping that she doesn't get caught, praying that it isn't all for nothing, she remembers hearing them talk about the infamous Rose Tyler. Just when she thought the pedestal couldn't get higher, turns out Rose was just a little bit more perfect. Saved Jack, brought him back to life, stole his heart too. Hearing the relief in his voice, well that just proved it. The woman was bloody Helen of Troy.

She tries not to let that bitterness eat at her. She's never met the woman who stole the Doctor's heart but she had to have been _something_ special. And if she plans to save the world, Martha realizes that she needs to be something special too. So she stops the comparisons, leaves that for when she gets back to the Doctor and tries her damnedest to be good enough for him now.


	7. You Never Needed Me

**You Never Needed Me**

The world won't remember her. She's not sure if that makes her happy or not. It's been a terrible, terrible year and there are billions of people alive today that hadn't been just yesterday. The Doctor makes sure to tell her that in between smiles and hugs that don't feel as warm as she expects them to.

She leaves him to his mourning and helps Jack clean up the aftermath on the ship. When things have settled enough, they sit down for a proper meal, just the two of them there to appreciate it.

"I never got to ask. How did you meet the Doctor?" Martha pushes her salad around a bit.

"Ah, what a tale. It was back in London, 1942. The Nazis were invading and an alien ship had just crash landed. I lured the Doctor and Rose in, hoping to get a payday out of them but things didn't turn out the way I planned. Long story short, I ended up joining the crew of the SS TARDIS, chasing trouble across the universe." Jack smiles and takes a bite of his sandwich.

"What happened? You said the Doctor left you?"

"We were in Kyoto when we were zapped up to Satellite Five in the year 200,100. The Daleks had been building an army above earth for God knows how long."

Martha feels an shudder run up her spine. It seems like ages ago but the memory still stirs up fear.

"The Daleks? I've met them, in New York in the 20s."

"Yeah. They don't seem to stay dead, do they?" There's a hardness behind his eyes the reminds Martha of the Doctor. "Anyway, the Doctor came up with one of his brilliant plans to destroy them. Only one catch. The machine would wipe out everything - us, the Daleks, Satellite 5, the remaining inhabitants of Earth."

"Would he though? Kill everything?"

Jack pauses. He doesn't know how to answer her. He hasn't had much a chance to get to know this new Doctor but he knows, fundamentally, that they're the same person. If she hasn't come against that yet, well, he isn't trying to dissuade her - traveling with the Doctor is a once in lifetime opportunity - but he feels like he owes her a warning. He clears his throat and chooses his words carefully.

"He had to. The Daleks, they'd kill everything in existence. It was one planet weighed against the universe. He's a Time Lord, it's his duty. If he doesn't make that decision..." He let's the sentence hang in the air, let's her take from it what she will. Jack doesn't mention Gallifrey or its casualties. He doesn't mention the details of the Time War or the blue eyed, leather clad soldier that came before.

"So what, you got trapped when this machine went off?" Martha clears her throat and blushes a little, as if it's immensely impolite to ask. Jack flashes her one of his smiles.

"No. I was shot. Go figure. When I woke up, the new Dalek Empire was gone and so was everyone else. From what the Doctor told me, Rose saved us."

Martha huffs a little but pats herself on the back for not rolling her eyes. She does, however, fidget with her fork before she summons the courage to say what's been haunting her.

"Can I ask you a question? What's so special about her? About Rose? He never talks about her, not really. Not unless he's telling me how wonderful she is, or was. The minute I ask a question, he just…completely shuts down."

Jack gets the same wistful look in his eyes as the Doctor, but the aching sadness isn't there.

"Rose was wonderful. There was something about her that just made you want to be a better person. Didn't hurt that she was easy on the eyes." He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively which gets a laugh from Martha.

"Were you two...?"

Jack, if it was at all possible, looked scandalized at the notion.

"God no! She was more like my hot platonic best friend." Jack's smile falters, just a bit. It's no secret that the Doctor was, is, madly in love with their blonde travel companion but that's not what Martha needs to hear right now. He offers her honesty, instead. A choice, because after all she's done, it's the least that he can do.

"The thing is, Martha, everyone falls in love with the Doctor. Hell, I did. And this regeneration has got _a lot_ going for him. But he doesn't love like we do. You could travel with him your whole life and never be more than a friend. You'll risk your life everyday just to be with him and one day, you might not make it back. Rose knew that."

"And now she's stuck in a parallel universe."

"And I get to live forever." He takes a sip from his glass because those words still don't taste right in his mouth. "Trust me, it ain't all daisies and cocktails. This life we live, the path the Doctor walks, it's not paved with happy endings. One day you'll have to decide why you're still with him."

Martha sighs. Jack isn't telling her anything she hasn't considered. Every moment with the Doctor is laced in uncertainty and it's both exhilarating and devastatingly frightening. "He's incredible, isn't he?"

Jack nods and tips his glass to her. "And terrifying."

"Do you regret it? Meeting him? Staying on?"

"Nah. Then again, I'd already signed my life away to the Time Agency. Intergalactic mayhem is kinda my thing. But you? You might."

The smile Jack offers her takes some of the sting out of his words, but she knows they're the truth. She can see it so clearly now and it's like a paper cut. So small and unnoticeable until someone goes and pours lemon juice on it and then there's no ignoring it. There's no ignoring what she isn't, what she might not ever be.

The End

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 ** _Author's Note:_** Now that I'm done with this fic, I have a secret to tell you - I am not a fan at Martha at all. I spent months trying to figure out if it's because I ship Rose w/ the Doctor but I've realized that although they've given you tons of backstory on her, the character is defined almost solely by her relationship to the Doctor. She was awesome in Smith and Jones - smart, witty, adventurous and then, BAM!, she's just following him around, waiting for him to be in danger before she gets to do anything. I wish they spent more time developing her, giving her character actual depth instead of just throwaway exposition. In the end, I just felt very sorry for her and how amazing she could have been.


End file.
